“My retainer has higher ilvl than you.”
– Mahikoko Sannel

If you’re rushing in from 3.x, and your Leatherworker gear is subpar, don’t worry! While your Leatherworker leveling journey will be harder, don’t worry so much! Read the clickies, they may help you!

Your gear is bad, and you feel bad. Playing catch up

Unlike gathering, its very VERY hard to “cheat” your way back into the game. The first few levels will be a little more difficult, but I’ve laid out a cost-efficient path for you! You’ll be EQUALS with even the most hardened crafters quickly enough!

If you’re using anything LESS than the Chimerical Felt / Hallowed Chestnut tier, you fall into the “some struggles ahead” pile.

What do I do to reach 61? 62?

Before we get into the specifics of Leatherworker, keep these little things in mind:

Grinding: is actually legit. You’re going to be using the materials anyway! Use the sparse HQ’s you get to craft levequest items if needed.

Commercial Engineering Manual: There’s no better time to use this than now when you’re a scrub. Grinding is legit at this point.

Levequests: You can buy them off the Market Board! You can craft them yourself, and if they’re NQ submit them anyway! Just do whatever you can that’s within your budget. It’s better than letting your leves pile up to 100, and any method to get out of “hell” is better than nothing. Buy up cheap NQ’s even!

Grand Company Submissions: They’re a “free” levequest, but they sometimes have things which are very expensive to craft. If you have a “star” entry, DO THAT AT ALL COSTS! The exp is huge. AT LEVEL 60 (to maybe 62) the chance of getting an endgame Heavensward submission is pretty significant. These are difficult to craft, and are sparsely stocked on the Market Board. GL!

Food: If you must, eat food to reach important CP points, or cover up where you feel you’re lacking. The Culinarian NPC in Kugane (X12 Y12~) sells some food, some of it can be pricey so maximize it! It also gives a welcome 3% EXP boost.

When does LTW leveling get better!?

At 61, 62, and 63, you will progressively get some gear upgrades that will get you within 90% power of the previous tier BiS – and at which point this guide gets much easier since everything is “UNIFORM” so to speak.

I will be putting more clicky box reminders for these events.

Level up your crafters simultaneously! (+DoL)

To prevent confusion on what rotation you use, what gear goes where… it’s just better IMO. There are many little reasons to do this which I am sure you can imagine.

Leveling gatherers at the same time as crafters is also good. You save money gathering your own resources. And when you DO decide to grind out some certain material (example, Koppranickel Sand), you get the gatherer EXP when you need it most (grinding in between collectibles!)See ourDoH| DoLlevelingguides.

LEVEL YOUR RETAINER

For any serious crafter, leveling your Retainer to 60+ is a HUGE money saver. They can gather monster drop mats for you, which tend to be expensive early on.

How do I level my retainer past 60!?You need to give it a job crystal. Go to any Retainer Vocate to get the voucher.

Amongst all DoH Leatherworker gains the utmost value of the valuable heavenly value of value high heavens from leveling retainers.

Leatherworker Leveling 60 to 62

L60 Fixing up your cross-class skills

To make things simple, try to have the same cross-class skills for every class. For the sake of simplicity we will try to use the SAME rotation for every class.

Disclaimer: I cannot promise this will work for you. Everyone is coming into Stormblood with different stat levels (you may be too weak or too strong). It’s very possible that your gear is SEVERELY lacking. In which case, it’s only natural you should expect more difficulty coming into Stormblood, right? But it’s a place to start.

If you’re missing CP, I highly suggest food buffs to cover your weaknesses in either CP or Craftsmanship.

No, it’s not the “perfect rotation” for you – only you can make that. It’s a good start template, and great for manual crafting as you can abuse the bejeesus out of “good procs” during the 2x Great Stride phase.

It’s all about progress: “How many steps it takes to synthesize progress” is the backbone of all rotations. Once you figure that out, you can reverse-engineer your own personal rotation.

THIS BECOMES SIGNIFICANTLY LESS OF A HASSLE IF YOU LEVEL ALL CRAFTERS SIMULTANEOUSLY! So you’re not confused on what rotation to use at what level / gear specs. See our DoH | DoLlevelingguides.

The below are TEMPLATES THAT YOU SHOULD TRY TO
ADJUST TO YOUR NEEDS.

L60 40DUR 558 DIFF

THIS ROTATION IS “WEAK” – it’s suited for guys fresh off the Heaven’s Ward tier. THIS ROTATION IS MEANT TO BE EDITED to suit your needs. It’s a basic template, macro at your own risk. Stormblood recipes are L61 – Being a level under the recipe has huge drawbacks.

Now, here’s the thing. There is almost ZERO reason to try an 80 durability recipe while LEVEL 60 – I recommend trying them at L61. However, if you want to craft your catch up gear one level early (why..?).

It’s not gagana get any better than “Hide to Go Seek“, Gagana Leather is literally the first layer of LTW crafting in Stormblood. Value of the heavenly heavens.

If you’re skinny and want to do 80 Durability, Gaganaskin Vest is probably vest. Don’t bother with the belt leve unless you can peel them off the market board on the cheap.

LTW 60 to 62: What I did in this tier

Here’s what I personally did in this tier:

It’s simple really, make a metric ton of Gagana Leathers. I made 33 since I had 99 skins from my Retainers. If you’re not so lucky (or you didn’t listen to my advice) then crafting around 20 is okay. Submit as many as you need to reach L62 once “everything settles down”.

Use Commercial Engineering Manual to help get you thru the early level hump.

Along the way, I made every possible L61 and L62 crafter and gatherer gear piece (since I used them. If you don’t gather then just DoH gear is fine). Crafting log exp and any extra craft gives that little bit of EXP.

Grinding Leatherworker 60 to 62

I’d like to state it now that grinding on 40 durability ingots is a huge part of crafting leveling (you’re gonna end up using the materials, anyway…) so always try to optimize your rotation for those.

Nothing to grind on really except Gagana Leather. If you make a lot you can further grind on useful pieces of DoL and DoH gear – the most useful of all is Gaganaskin Vest, which is popular amongst gatherers coming into Stormblood.

Important notes and events in this tier

Gear Upgrades: 61 Left side (Bloodhempen & Gaganaskin Tier)

Here’s a list of the new gear you’ll be getting soon. In this table, 5 of the left-side pieces are L61. Start with the Shirt, when you’re getting them – its gives the largest stats!

LEAVE OPEN MELDS AND EASY FORCE MELDS to cover up for any “Hey, I’m missing a tiny bit of craftsmanship!” scenarios. Melding? Feel free to upgrade the materia you will use. Of all the left-side pieces, the CHEST is the only one you will be changing down the line (65+). The rest are optional upgrades.

Leatherworker Leveling 62 to 64

If you do plan to level all crafters to 70, you may as well do them at the same time. You will thank me for it. The very second you reach a new level, switch.

If you can level your DoL at roughly the same time (they usually pull ahead very quickly), it’s obviously value since you can farm your own materials.

Level your retainers to 70 by giving them a soul crystal. This will save you a lot of money. If you’re part of the scrub pile, chances are, your gil is part of the scrub pile too. Check out ourDoH| DoLlevelingguides.

“Don’t come saying I didn’t tell you about retainers and leveling simultaneously. Eyes are primarily for reading – not crying”– Mahiko “Gil” San

Haha. The Boots and Halfgloves are only good if you can luck out and find cheap ones off the market board. Also, what kind of client orders three gloves!?

That leaves us with Gyuki Leather Wristband. It’s the best leve in this tier IF YOU SO CHOOSE TO USE ONE FROM THE L62 LTW LEVE TIER.

Basically, If you need levequest power to push you onward – you will be using more Gagana Leathers (from the L62 tier) to scrape by reaching 64.

“B-but I lose out on some EXP if I backtrack on levequests!”. You can resolve this by crafting an ALC recipe, “JnJ Baby Shampoo”. If you look at the tooltip it clearly reads “No More Tears”.

LTW 62 to 64: What I did in this tier

Here’s what I personally did in this tier:

For most, L62 is enough (as long as your gear is up to date) to start grinding on Gyuki Leather. Make as many as you realistically can afford. I made a little more due to “extraneous crafts”, but 20 is ok.

I personally crafted the entire right-side for DoL at this point. The Gyuki Leather tier accessories for DoL are enough to carry any DoL to 70, which make them a popular choice for scrubs entering from HW with no gear. (See: BTN MIN Leveling).

I do not advise crafting or using the Gyuki Leather tier DoH gear. It is completely unnecessary (even the shirt from WVR).

Making / Buying the HQ Offhand? I did not find this “necessary” UNTIL LEVEL 65. Looking back, if that was the case, then you might as well pick it up ASAP. It’s an “optional” upgrade for sure, but meaningful.

LTW L63 HQ Off-hand: High Steel Awl IS MANDATORY! Please upgrade your off-hand as often as you can. The stats are huge.

I sincerely hope you have followed the gear upgrades up to this point. Your “end goal” is to get 409 CP. Make it happen.

From here on, I will assume YOUR GEAR IS UP TO DATE.

Gear Check: Just a reminder

If everyone followed the guide, their gear will now be caught up. Here’s what you should be packing…

Just a small correction, for the level 64 leve quests Tiger Leather and Tigerskin boots are swapped. Tigerskin boots are actually for the single turn in Shoe on the other foot, and Tiger Leather is used for the Triple Turn in Tiger in the Sack.

For the ltw from lvl 56 you can turn in Dhalmel leather as collectable… imo, it’s the cheapest way to lvl up from 56 to 60. (Also happens with other jobs, like the WVR with Ramie cloth)
You get a bunch of dhalmel hides from reatiner and the dark chestnut logs gathered from forelands… then it’s just 2 or 3 hours of crafting with macros. (I used the 2.0 bis and the blue scrips chest)

Thank you mizuki, this is one of the things I’ve been struggling to update given the amount of updates I have to do. I’ll integrate this once I test and format the guides to the “new standard”! Thank you!

I don’t really understand the automatic hostility towards precursor leves. I can understand how they -can- be expensive, but out of hand? The level 25 leve for Padded Leather Duckbills is made completely out of vendor items. In a set of leves full of Aldgoat leather, expensive items from other tradeskills, and generally simply not things that can be obtained from a vendor, the Padded Leather Duckbills are far and away the cheapest option there, even if consuming more shards than the other ones.

Now that would completely depend on server prices and may fluctuate greatly. Like mentioned in all guides please use discretion. This block of text isn’t the LAW, but truly a GUIDE. As such, your input is appreciated and may provide insight for others in the future.

This one and a lot of guides here are just bad and need to reworked. So many instances where it rejects a leve because an item may be expensive/difficult to craft while at the same time suggesting to do the actual expensive (and tedious with minimal reward) repeatable leves. About the only thing they’re good for is a reference for which are the courier leves because that’s gonna be the best and fastest exp, but even then the information is inaccurate in places, like the 35-40 courier which actually asks for Boarskin Ringbands. A comment mentioned it but I didn’t look down to read it and I had already wasted time and leves making crakows before realizing the error.

Just a heads up about the level 20 leves: the Hard Leather Cesti is made using ALDGOAT Leather, NOT Hard Leather as the name might imply. Aldgoat Leather has to be crafted and cannot be obtained from NPCs AFAIK. So this might affect which leve is best for this leveling stretch.